Recycling or Remaking?

Sigh. That's really all I can say to this whole "Rob Zombie remaking The Blob, but without a blob" chatter. It's not a sigh that another movie is being remade, or even about the removal of said blob from said film. I won't even bemoan the fact that Zombie is remaking something else instead of making Tyrannosaurus Rex or something new-ish.

What I will say is that if someone wants to "remake" a movie and then take away the most identifiable component of it, do yourself a favor and don't call it a remake. At this point in time, where cinema is shamelessly cannibalizing itself, it would be nice to go back to the day of making a movie and pretending it was something other than just a retread.

Okay, perfect example: Evolution. I don't know how many of you remember Evolution, but it was an Ivan Reitman film starring David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Sean William Scott, Orlando Jones, and Dan Aykroyd. It's about aliens landing and invading a small desert town, and then becoming a giant monster that the heroes have to spray with shampoo to kill.

I bring Evolution up because the film is, for all intents and purposes, Ghostbusters. Same director, same ensemble cast structure, same beats and plot points. Substitute aliens for ghosts, and now it's a different movie. (Evolution, by the way, may end up being the better Ghostbusters 3 than the actual Ghostbusters 3 we'll get next year-ish.)

Perhaps it seems disingenuous to pretend you're making another movie that is essentially the same film, but I find that the practice is more like the ways that stories repeat themselves through history. They have roughly the same archetypes, similar storylines, and easily identifiable genre "types". The variation on a theme is fun, and a really clever filmmaker or writer can take those familiar tropes and make something new-ish out of old stories.

On the other hand, if you're going to admit that "yes, I'm lifting directly from this source. This one source that all of you know and can go to directly for reference", where's the fun in that? You're immediately inviting comparisons where there don't need to be any before people have seen it. Moon is clearly borrowing from the 2001 / Silent Running / Dark Star / Alien model, but it's not a remake of any of them, nor does it profess to be. Moon is its own film, one that draws comparisons, but not in such a direct manner.

The Blob, with or without a blob, does.

I don't mean to just pick on Rob Zombie. Truthfully, there's the potential for a really sick, really twisted movie there, but you don't need to call it The Blob. Shit, The Stuff is in many ways The Blob, but it's not trying to BE The Blob, as the other Blob remake did and mostly failed at. It's okay to pretend your slasher movie isn't a Friday the 13th film and still have some dude killing people in the woods. One of the reasons I think it's so silly to remake Outland is because Outland is High Noon in space. Just make your own High Noon in space; you don't even need to call it Outland.

My final point, and then I'll put it to rest:

Yojimbo. A Fist Full of Dollars. Last Man Standing. All three the same movie and yet all unique in their own ways. Three expressions of one story, all of which are recognizable as related but don't have to be linked as "remakes", or to share a name.